Practice 11/7/2007

There was a low turnout for practice today amongst the players and fans in attendance. Here's a list of the players who were not on the ice for practice

Kovalchuk
Hossa
Holik
Kozlov
White
Enstron
X
Klee
Havelid (although he did come out in shorts and a tee shirt to skate for about 3 minutes before returning to locker room)

Kovy's car was not on the lot either so he was probably out having an MRI (as listed on the message board).

The Don was not on the ice either. As usual these days, McCrimmon / Weeks / Tony ran the practice.

Here is an overview of the drills which were run today.
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1. Breakaway drill shooter on goalie
2. Drill where player took pass at blue line and skated around coach between face off dots and took a shot.
3. Two on one breakaway drill with shot on goalie
4. Three on two breakaway drill with shot on goalie. This drill featured pass from one wing to the other wing (long pass) with several passes afterward before shot on goal.
5. Two man drill where multiple touch passes between players followed by entering the zone and shot on goal.
6. Three on one defenseman drill and then maintaining zone with multiple shots.
7. Goalies as a team/duo versus two shooters. If the goalie made multiple saves the shooters had to skate hard the length of the ice to the other goal. If they shooters scored they only had to skate back to the blue line.
8. Weeks did shooting drill against goalies where they would make sharp movements from one post to the other and then face shot from Weeks. (this was the first time in awhile where I saw a drill with a coach and goalies only. was wondering why goalies did not get individual practice time with coach...and it happened today).

Observations

1. Ondrej does not like to be scored on in practice. He and Moose (much more than Kari) seem to treat practice more like a game whereas Kari appears to try hard on some shots and not others.
2. As usual, Moose was first on ice.
3. Boulton has a nice cut on his left eye which is healing. Probably from his scrap the other night.
4. It was colder that usual in the practice facility...probably because it was cold outside last night.
5. Ondrej skates very well. He is almost in Moose's league when it comes to the skating drills.
6. Ondrej has an exceptionally fast glove. He got beat a few times high glove side but compared to Kari (not a knock on Kari) he is very hard to beat high glove side.
7. The drills under McCrimmon are shorter in duration and if he does not like how the drill is going he stops everyone, calls them in, and starts again.
8. Moose tackled Haydar at one point and had him in a headlock (it was funny to watch).

The players who practiced were off the ice in an hour (which was good because the Glads were suiting up ready to take the ice at noon.

Because of all the players who did not practice there's really nothing concrete to report relative to line combinations. The Bolts / Thorburn / Slater line did do some of the drills together and seemed to be together more than any other grouping I can recall.

The team had a lunch brought in and Bernie Mullin was there (I never saw The Don though). Boulton's wife and 2 of his kids were there and went in for lunch as well. Eric's son cried when Eric tried to pick him up (like he was scared) so Eric took his helmet off and all was good after that.

Craig from the AJC was there as usual so I suspect he'll be posting something about the practice today assuming he's not already done so.

That's about it. I can't go to practice tomorrow so my next Talkin' About Practice entry will be next Monday.